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She crawled forward and wedged herself between his legs. He was reluctant to let her in, as he always was during a Surge, but eventually he allowed her to curl her body against his, allowed her to lay her head against his chest. His heart thundered under her ear, and although the night was cool, his skin was boiling and sticky with sweat.

“I want you to try to picture it.” Her words were barely audible, but she knew he heard them. With effort, she looped her fingers through his, the tension in his hand nearly preventing her from doing so. “The ocean. Do you see it?”

His eyes were now shut, and so were hers, but she felt him nod. Loren drew a deep breath, and Darien mirrored it, his chest shuddering under her cheek.

“I want you to count backwards from a hundred with me,” she whispered. “Okay?” She lightly squeezed his rough fingers, and he squeezed back.

Together, they counted. From one hundred to one, each number they uttered in unison a soft and barely audible breath. Aside from their counting, the only other sound in the night was the wind wending through the yard. What began as a gentle breeze soon turned into gusts that cooled Darien’s skin. Jasmine shrubs rustled, the brass windchimes that hung from the roof of the veranda below tinkling.

Loren focused every part of her mind on her magic, trying desperately to call upon it like she had in the past, during the few times when she had managed to help Darien with his Surges. But that power inside her didn’t answer her plea, and the solar-shaped conduit tucked beneath her pajama shirt stayed cold as ice against her chest.

By the time they’d counted down to one, Darien’s breathing had slowed, and so had his erratic heartrate.

Hopeful, she tipped her head back and peered up at him, only to find that his eyes—now open—were solid black. Rage had replaced his suffering, his face a cold mask.

It was in that moment that Loren knew her efforts could not reach him tonight.

She ran her thumb across his knuckles, feeling the ridges of scars flecking his skin. “You can go if you need to,” she whispered.

It took a moment for Darien to react to her statement. Eventually, he blinked, as if shaking his mind free of a dream, and tipped his head down, his eyes meeting hers. He made to reach for her face with his free hand but stopped, clearly not trusting himself in this moment. It was a foolish thing—his distrust for himself. He’d never done anything to hurt her. Not once, not even close.

“I’ll stay.” Slowly, he lowered the hand that was still frozen in the air between them to his knee, fingers curling into a fist, a couple joints cracking from force. “I’ll try to stay.”

And he did try. He tried really hard. They returned to bed together, lighting the candles on their way. They left the doors ajar for fresh air and to lessen any feelings of being trapped.

Barely thirty minutes passed before he was pushing to his feet again and striding into the walk-in closet. When he came back out, he was dressed in the same clothes he always wore to the Pit. A long-sleeved gray henley, jeans that were ripped and bloodstained, and black combat boots cracking from wear. The strap of the duffel bag Loren knew was filled with weapons, Stygian salts, and several changes of clothes was slung over his shoulder.

With the room now candlelit, Loren could see his features as he stopped beside the bed and lightly squeezed her foot through the sheets.

“I have to go, Lola.” The words were hoarse and burdened with regret. “I’m sorry.”

She swallowed a lump in her throat. “Just go,” she urged softly. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

He left without another word, closing the door quietly behind him.

Loren rolled onto her side and tucked the duvet up to her chin, listening for the sounds that would indicate that he had left the house. With the audio-blocking spells Mortifer usually kept blanketing Hell’s Gate, it was hard to hear anything outside the walls. But she picked up on the faint sound of his car growling to a start, and the even fainter sound of it accelerating as he took off into the night.

He didn’t have anything to be sorry for. None of this was his fault.

But Loren was sorry she couldn’t help him. Her magic was gone, and without it, she had never felt so useless.

7

Darien drove the streets for a long time, trying to shake the Surge without the need to enter the Pit. But the more time passed, the harder it became to resist the urge to fight, to break bones and draw blood and hit things until his knuckles were split open and raw.

He was nearing the Meatpacking District when he swerved into the small parking lot of a convenience store on Redwater Street. The neon sign mounted above the doors read 24/7 Stop, nearly every letter and two of the numbers burnt out. In the center of the lot was a cluster of charging stations for vehicles, the cristala coated in grime and a patchwork of spray paint.

The car dipped into a pothole, causing the headlights to bounce and illuminate the area. He narrowly missed the propane tank at the side of the dilapidated building as he screeched to a halt.

Darien cut the engine, unbuckled his seatbelt, and got out of the car, slamming the door shut behind him. The chirping of the alarm system as it engaged was like nails clawing his eardrums to bloody shreds.

The bricks on this side of the store were stained with old and fresh graffiti, and young demons sifted through the contents of a nearby dumpster, hissing and grappling with one another for scraps. Several teenaged vampires watched from where they sat smoking on the curb, skateboards discarded at their feet. In the moonlight, their faces were so colorless, they looked like corpses. The thick odor of vanilla-flavored blunts filled the night air as Darien swept up to the barred door and swung it open, making a point not to look at his reflection in the glass.

The bells hanging from the bars on the door chimed, declaring his entry. The sound not only grated on his nerves, just like his car’s alarm system, but also made it a challenge to blink the Sight out of his vision, the black of his eyes drawing the attention of the lone employee standing behind the counter. The middle-aged, half-human male set down today’s issue of the Daystar and tracked Darien with a wary gaze.

Darien paid him no mind and made for the magazine aisle. He paced up and down the length of it, hands buried deep in the pockets of his ripped and bloodied jeans.

Ah, shit—his jeans. As if the color of his eyes wasn’t bad enough, he’d come in here wearing jeans that were stained with the blood of not just vampires, werewolves, and warlocks, but nearly every breed of demon in the book. The last thing he needed right now was to get arrested for walking around looking like he’d committed a mass murder and rolled in the blood of his victims.